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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Homophobia',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/05/12.jpg" alt="White, flat, butterfly-shaped flowers" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		I was going to get my courses registered for after work last night, but instead, my talkative neighbour caught me as I arrived and wanted to talk until nearly midnight.
		While they knew I&apos;m sick and just wanted to sit down.
		So I didn&apos;t get it done last night like I&apos;d planned.
		So anyway, I ended up doing it early today before going to sleep for the night.
	</p>
	<p>
		It seemed at first that the school had removed courses from the available course list, as I&apos;d feared they would.
		The course list wasn&apos;t constant between terms.
		That meant I couldn&apos;t actually plan any of my elective courses, as I didn&apos;t know which would still be available during the terms after my required courses are taken care of.
		But while I&apos;d written my course list parser to alert me to the fact that courses on the previous list weren&apos;t on the current list, I&apos;d failed to tell it to tell me <strong>*which*</strong> courses had been dropped from the list.
		To know how bad the damage was, I had to know which and how many courses were no longer available.
		I set to work making minor adjustments to the script, but I was getting odd results.
		First, it appeared that the new course list was completely empty.
		That wasn&apos;t right.
		I&apos;d just pasted the course list into the file to be parsed, and I&apos;d seen a few dozen courses on it.
		I worked my way through the bugs in my script, and found the issue: my script was keeping track of which courses hadn&apos;t previously been seen (that is, they were new courses) and checking the list of known courses against that list as if it was a list of all currently-available courses.
		So with no new courses, the list was empty, and with an empty course list, all previous courses were showing up as having been removed.
		Even if new courses had been added, all previously-available courses would still fail the check, as they wouldn&apos;t be on the list of new courses.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, with the kinks worked out, it seems the university&apos;s list of available courses has actually been identical for at least two terms in a row.
		Consequently, this is only the second term I&apos;ve attempted to plan so far ahead, so I don&apos;t have data from other past terms.
		I&apos;ve only got record of one transition between terms; a single data point.
		From that single data point, I can&apos;t extrapolate much, but from what little data that is, it appears I won&apos;t have to worry about course availability changes often.
		I might not have to deal with them at all.
	</p>
	<p>
		So anyway, I&apos;ve registered for <span title="Mobile Applications">CS 4405</span> and <span title="Computer Graphics">CS 4406</span> as previously planned.
		I&apos;d guessed that <span title="Mobile Applications">CS 4405</span> would be mostly, if not entirely, devoted to learning to develop Android applications.
		Looking at the course description, not so much.
		It looks like it&apos;s instead more of a study of the theory of mobile operating systems and applications than anything.
		I&apos;m not even sure it&apos;ll help having my mobile in working order and up to date.
		I&apos;d guessed that <span title="Computer Graphics">CS 4406</span> would teach me how to draw computer graphics better, though I wasn&apos;t quite sure how that&apos;d be managed.
		I don&apos;t think book learning&apos;s enough to help me in that department.
		I&apos;m pretty bad.
		After reading the description though, I&apos;m not sure what it&apos;s about.
		Maybe it teaches how to use graphics-editing software?
		I already know how to use the $a[GIMP], but I don&apos;t know everything it can do.
		It&apos;d help to learn more.
		But it sounds like maybe it&apos;s about graphical applications as opposed to command line applications.
		It says something about packages too, which can easily be applied to the $a[OS], but I&apos;m not sure what it has to do with computer graphics.
		I guess I&apos;ll have to wait and see whether this course is a disappointment or actually what I&apos;m hoping for.
	</p>
	<p>
		I also got my tuition cheque picked up today.
		Hopefully I&apos;ll remember to get that mailed out tomorrow.
	</p>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Cloud storage can be useful, but it&apos;s sad to hear some operating systems are rejecting support for new local storage technologies.
			I have to ask though: <strong>*which*</strong> operating systems are not taking advantage of new local storage technologies?
			I can&apos;t imagine any free software systems would stand for that in their own systems.
			There are too many people still using local storage, and as long as there are contributors willing to sing their time into writing support for the new and better file-storage technologies, it should get integrated.
			The thing that you have to remember too is that Linux actually has the highest market share when it comes to operating systems in use.
			Sure, Linux is fragmented and has hundreds of different versions, but they all pretty much use the same kernel, and it&apos;s the kernel that needs to support filesystem technologies.
			That makes Linux pretty unified when it comes to filesystem technology support.
		</p>
		<p>
			I can easily see OS X not supporting new local filesystem advances.
			Apple has been trying to push everyone to the cloud for years.
			I can also see Windows doing the same.
			Microsoft still refuses to add support for filesystems they didn&apos;t develop themselves, and the Microsoft&apos;s own filesystems have been far behind the times for longer than I&apos;ve been alive.
			It&apos;s important to remember though that Windows only has a majority market share when it comes to desktops and laptops.
			In the whole computer ecosystem, Windows is a minority player, and there are a lot of reasons for that.
			One of them, as I&apos;ve said, is that they&apos;re so behind the times with their core technologies, such as filesystems.
			Windows has a lot of flashy features, but the foundational parts needed to support those features is crumbly and not all that great.
			When people need something that&apos;ll actually get work done and get it done reliably, they have to turn to other systems.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="diet">
	<h2>Dietary intake</h2>
	<p>
		I ate a couple of small burritos with pico de gallo, beans, and rice.
		For dinner, I brought 202 grams of spaghetti and ate it with a small cup of marinara sauce.
		I guess technically, the meal I&apos;d planned was spaghetti with the dairy-free cheese sauce, but this was the closest I could do, given the ingredients that I had at the time.
		I also ate 197 grams of pretzels and 284 grams of mixed juice today.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religious study</h2>
	<p>
		I ended up striking up a conversation with an elderly person that usually hands out the church programs each week.
		I can&apos;t recall what all we spoke about, as we spoke for almost an hour.
		(I ended up getting to church way too early out of fear of getting there late.)
		I took limited notes, but only on the religious things, as I thought they&apos;d think taking notes on everything they said would be rude.
		I could get away with the religious stuff though because it was clearly an attempt to remember and help me learn.
		I&apos;m honestly trying to learn this stuff too, even if I don&apos;t believe a word of it.
	</p>
	<p>
		We got started talking because they said they weren&apos;t sure if the church was doing anything for Mother&apos;s Day, but that they often do.
		They said that they&apos;re not one of the higher-ups, but just a person that comes to church every week.
		They said they pray each week to make it before the sacrament is taken, and Jesus grants that request.
		They then thanked Jesus.
		They talked about how they have a close personal relationship with Jesus, and that Jesus talks to them.
		I replied that that must be nice.
		(I mean, with such a relationship, you&apos;d know your god exists.)
		They said they don&apos;t understand why many people don&apos;t, so I replied that would, but I don&apos;t know how.
		They said that if you want to know how to have a close relationship with Jesus, you need to read 3 Nephi or Benjamin.
		3 Nephi is in the Book of Mormon.
		Where is Benjamin?
		Is that one in the Bible?
		The Pearl of Great Price?
		I&apos;m not sure.
		I&apos;ll need to look into that later.
	</p>
	<p>
		They mentioned that there are drive-by shootings regularly in Eugene, but Eugene tries to keep them under wraps.
		I&apos;m not sure how true that is.
		They also said the skate park under the bridge is a haven for drug dealers at night.
		That one actually seems rather likely.
	</p>
	<p>
		They also said that people should be trying to get the Melchizedek priesthood as soon as they could.
		I thought that was a bit odd.
		I wasn&apos;t quite sure what to make of it at the time.
		As I write about it now though, I realise that only half the population is allowed to hold <strong>*any*</strong> sort of priesthood in this church though.
	</p>
	<p>
		They mentioned their time in one of the temples, but couldn&apos;t say what had happened there at all.
		Apparently you have to take a vow of silence when you go.
		You&apos;re not allowed to talk about what happens in the temple outside the temple.
		That seems super shady.
		Seriously.
		For a church that talks so much about light, it&apos;s incredibly suspicious that they don&apos;t want light shed on their temple ceremonies.
		It made me briefly consider trying to pretend to accept the religion, just to one day infiltrate the temple and bring what they do to the light they so claim to love.
		What are the consequences of being an apostate though?
		I mean, it&apos;s not like I can stick with this church forever.
		This church believes in a god that doesn&apos;t match what we see in this world and preaches mindsets and behaviours that are evil.
	</p>
	<p>
		Apparently, there&apos;s a book holding the prophesies of Joseph Smith.
		It&apos;s worth looking into that some day, though probably not any time soon.
		Well, maybe I should find the name of the book soon, to get it added to my reading list.
		The person also made the claim that if you don&apos;t pay tithing, you don&apos;t get any blessings.
		It seems the claim is that it&apos;s not certain blessings that you don&apos;t get, but all of them.
	</p>
	<p>
		During the meeting, gender-segregated camp-outs were announced, and then two adults were given levels of priesthood from the Aaronic priesthood, the lesser priesthood.
		I&apos;d wondered whether the lesser priesthood was given to adults.
		For example, converts might not have gotten the lesser priesthood levels as a child.
		Now I know.
		It&apos;s likely that you have to work your way up the ranks, no matter when you start.
		I also found I couldn&apos;t sing today.
		I&apos;m just too congested.
		So I sat in silence.
		I noticed I wasn&apos;t as tired though as church usually makes me.
		Do the songs drain me?
		Maybe they have a lesser effect when I zone out and sort of half listen to them instead of trying to sing along.
		Is that a part of what hymns are designed to do?
		I notice that you don&apos;t tend to hear that style of music outside of church.
		People want something more upbeat and energising.
	</p>
	<p>
		We had some speakers.
		The first opened with stuff about how mothers do most of the cooking and cleaning.
		Stupid sexism.
		This church is just riddles with it.
		The mother&apos;s place is to cook and clean.
		They went on to say that it&apos;s a misconception that to be a mother, you have to bear children.
		Being a mother doesn&apos;t require children, they said, meaning that they weren&apos;t referring to adoption.
		They said you can mother the adults in your life as well.
		They continued that brethren, fathers, and sons should listen to mothers talking about their day.
		Again, sexist.
		No mention of sisters, other mothers, and daughters listening, or of fathers speaking.
		They closed by saying we should all help the mothers in our lives.
		Again, helping is good, but it shouldn&apos;t be sexist and mother-specific.
	</p>
	<p>
		The next speaker talked about how children are entitled to birth within the bounds of marital fidelity.
		Apparently, 40% of children are born to single mothers.
		(I&apos;d agree, that&apos;s a startling statistic.)
		That puts more strain on the mother, meaning that the child doesn&apos;t get raised as well.
		The speaker continued that within a marriage, a child has two positive role models instead of just one.
		(Again, the speaker seemed like they were on a roll.)
		They said that the parents can work together as equal partners.
		(Again, very good.)
		Then they started discussing the effects of being raised by a single parent.
		Students with two parents graduate 91% of the time, compared to a 60% graduation rate for children of single parents.
		(Again, this seems like a logical result of the greater stress of raising children alone and lesser amount of care a single parent has the energy and time to provide.)
		Children with two parents are less likely to have a divorce later in life.
		(I&apos;d say they&apos;re likely better adjusted and know better what to look for in a partner due to having seen a pair of functioning and happy partners through their entire lives.)
		They&apos;re more less likely to suffer from abusive relationships (they&apos;re less likely to <strong>*stay*</strong> in a relationship with warning signs due to better self esteem) and better able to cope with difficulties (likely due to having had better role models along with the improved self esteem).
		But that was where the talk went downhill.
		And fast.
		First, having one man and one woman is a vital part of Jesus&apos; plan.
		(Homophobia.
		Joy.)
		And nothing is as important for a woman to do than be a mother.
		(Considering that this wasn&apos;t the speaker that said you don&apos;t need children to be a mother, I&apos;m going to assume this means they were pushing that women need to be baby factories.)
		However, they did say that the kingdom of Elohim cannot be complete without women, and women are able to act in the name of Elohim.
		They also claimed that in one study, Mormon students seemed to really be on top of everything.
		They also talked about their day job as a special education teacher for students with behavioural problems.
		Of the twenty problem students that they work with, nineteen of them have single parents.
		They continued, saying that when you&apos;re a member of this church, life is easier, because Elohim tells you who you are and what your place is.
		(Just lovely.
		When you follow the church, you don&apos;t get to be yourself, and must conform to the church&apos;s standard.
		And they&apos;re presenting this as a <strong>*positive*</strong> thing!?)
		They dropped the sexism for a bit to discuss some &quot;advice for women&quot; they&apos;d heard from one of the church authorities.
		They said both pieces actually apply to men and women alike.
		First, we should limit our use of and dependence on mobile telephones.
		(I&apos;d go so far as to say to limit our use of and dependence on <strong>*all*</strong> telephones, mobile and land line alike, but I can&apos;t really disagree with them.)
		And secondly, we should be kind to others.
		They concluded saying that we should treat ourselves with kindness, understanding, and love.
		We should treat ourselves as Jesus would treat us.
		If we do that, we&apos;ll feel the healing love of Christ.
		(Um.
		What?
		No, that&apos;s not how it works.
		That&apos;s not what you&apos;re feeling at that point.
		You&apos;re feeling the healing love of <strong>*yourself*</strong> and <strong>*falsely attributing*</strong> that healing love to Jesus.
		I do agree that we should treat ourselves with care though.
		I know I certainly would do better if I was easier on myself.)
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, a family got up and sang.
		They sand the first verse, the congregation sang the second, then the third verse was both groups singing their respective verses at the same time, with an altered final line.
		A nice idea.
		The song they sang though ...
		It was about how parents lead the way, teaching children to trust and obey.
		That theme of trusting and obeying without question really fits in with what the church seems to believe, and that fact wasn&apos;t lost on me.
	</p>
	<p>
		After the song, we ha another speaker.
		This one said we have a duty to awaken our children the truth of the gospel.
		Huh.
		The gospel doesn&apos;t seem to be very true as far as I can tell.
		It&apos;s also our responsibility to infuse them with the traditions of our families.
		Um.
		What?
		Most traditions are garbage.
		And the traditions of our own families are no better than the traditions of other families.
		Why take care to pass on pointless traditions?
		I understand maybe <strong>*wanting*</strong> to pass on traditions, but it makes no sense for this to be a <strong>*responsibility*</strong>.
		They also said we need to make our homes sanctuaries of faith.
		In other words, sanctuaries of not questioning that which would otherwise be questioned.
		They made the claim that happiness is most found in homes founded on faith and the teachings of Jesus.
		They also claimed that it&apos;s the mother who has the job of caring for the children, but that the parents should be considered equal partners.
		If you&apos;re trying to push responsibilities onto a specific parent without that being something the parents decided together for themselves, how is this an equal partnership?
	</p>
	<p>
		After the main sacrament meeting, the young men went to the women&apos;s meeting to serve them and to primary to help deal with the children.
		It sounds like the older men still went to their segregated meeting though.
	</p>
	<p>
		Come to think of it, my mother&apos;s idea of Mothers&apos; Day and Fathers&apos; Day seems very similar to how the people in this church seem to feel.
		It&apos;s about gender, not about gender plus parenthood.
		Is this where she got those ideas from?
	</p>
	<p>
		I was thinking about the one man and one woman issue later in the shower.
		I came to the conclusion that this is where I need to part ways with the church.
		I mean, I was never a believer, but there&apos;s no way I can support this.
		I&apos;ve been giving up my Sunday mornings for church, even though Friday through Monday mornings are an important study time for me.
		If the missionaries can&apos;t dispel my suspicions about the church being anti-queer, I&apos;m not giving up my Sunday mornings any more.
		If this is one of the churches that thinks marriage is necessarily between a man and a woman, I&apos;m done associating with them.
		I&apos;ll bring up to the missionaries that the lord, their god, didn&apos;t make everyone hetero.
		Are they not allowed to be happy?
		And I&apos;ll bring up people such as me, that aren&apos;t even a man or a woman, and thus can&apos;t be involved in a marriage between a man and a woman.
		Are we not allowed to be happy?
		If they claim that the church isn&apos;t opposed to non-hetero relationships, I&apos;ll be sure to ask about their temple marriages.
		That&apos;ll really put the nail in the coffin.
		It&apos;ll show what the church&apos;s real stance is.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="flowers">
	<h2>Odd flowers</h2>
	<p>
		I passed by some flowers on my way home from church.
		They caught my attention because they looked like little hearts.
		I stopped and took a look.
		They weren&apos;t heart-shaped though.
		Instead, they&apos;re shaped sort of like butterflies!
		They&apos;re oddly flat, like paper cut-outs, a comparison that&apos;s even more accurate due to how white the flowers are.
		The differing sizes of the fused petals causes the butterfly look, as two of the petals are small, like the small parts of the wings, two are large, like the large parts of the wings, and the final petal is so small that it doesn&apos;t even seem to exist on most of the flowers, providing spacing where it otherwise would be to properly position the wings.
		What bizarre flowers these are.
		I haven&apos;t seen any like them before.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Minetest">
	<h2>Minetest</h2>
	<p>
		Today, I decided I need to build &quot;light&quot; versions of <code>minestats</code> and probably <code>minequest</code> to test the nodes <code>minequest</code>-related mods will add as I define them.
		It&apos;ll be easier than trying to patch <code>minestats</code> into the Minetest 0.4.0 $a[API].
		Again.
		Seriously, this&apos;d be at least the third time I&apos;ve written that code, just to throw it away again when I either finish the project or hit a wall again.
		The light versions can be hard-coded to make assumptions that the full versions specifically avoid making, which would actually be a lot easier than avoiding the bad assumptions.
	</p>
	<p>
		I then came up with a name for my server, finally: Voxel Sanctuary.
		I&apos;ll try to get the domain name to match before I go live.
		This name would leave out the connotation of the domain being unsecure, which is unfortunate, but also makes it more likely that the name will get approved by the registry.
		If they end up declining my registration for other reasons, I might go back to using a name that references the lack of security, but at a $a[TLD] that allows it.
		So basically, the cool name will only be used if the specific registry I&apos;m experimenting with decides to allow my registration.
	</p>
	<p>
		I also thought about the renewability aspects I want to build into <code>minequest</code>.
		Some of the enhanced nodes will be used to spawn more of usually-limited nodes.
		I&apos;ve already known from the beginning that the sapling element will have to be responsible for the renewal of the iron, coal, and sand elements.
		I mean, those other three are finite in number, so if you spend all your enchantment points from those elements and they&apos;re needed to renew the elements they come from, those elements could be eliminated entirely.
		Saplings self-renew without my mods though, so from them, the other three elements can be spawned.
		From there, perhaps, the non-elements could be spawned, or they could likewise be spawned from the sapling element.
		I&apos;ll need more time to decide.
		However, I came to a realisation today: this system makes saplings a sort of parent element to the other three elements.
		Should these elemental items and the things they can be crafted into likewise be able to take on sapling-based enchantments?
		That seems logical to me.
		That means that every enchantable item will be able to take on a sapling-based enchantment.
		It also means that all items that are normally finite in number can take on a sapling-related enchantment.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, I decided to try to get a server set up soon.
		&quot;Soon&quot; is relative, but my main point is that I don&apos;t want to wait until I&apos;ve got <code>minequest</code> is complete to set up the server.
		Instead, it&apos;ll sort of be an odd test server.
		I&apos;ll patch the old game to work on the new engine, so other players using the modern client will be able to join the server and play.
		They won&apos;t need to use the ancient client.
		With testing of the point system being on the server, the &quot;light versions&quot; of the base mods I mentioned can pretty much be just dummied out.
		They only need to have enough functionality for me to test how the nodes work on the old engine.
		I don&apos;t need to test mining for points in the older environment.
		The main <code>minequest</code> core can be tested on the server.
	</p>
	<p>
		This&apos;ll also be a bit of a social experiment for me.
		There will be no administrator, an probably no method of protecting your creations.
		How much is a protection system needed?
		It&apos;d be interesting to find out.
		Obviously, an administrator isn&apos;t needed.
		Whatsoever.
		I already tried that in the past, but with a strong protection system in place, and it worked exceedingly well.
	</p>
	<p>
		If I do get my server set up soon though, it&apos;ll require committing to the terrible $a[ISP] soon.
		I can&apos;t even get the server&apos;s operating system installed without a home connection, let alone make the server accessible to other players.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
